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Hermeneutical Trumps

A. The qualia (the “what it is like” characteristics) of an experience are by definition inaccessible to anyone other than the one to which they occur. That is, I can never know what it feels like for you to be happy, hurt, eager, surprised, enlightened, in love, angry, in this place or that place, in this body or that body, male if I am female or vice versa, you rather than me.

B. People lie. They lie with their facial expressions, they lie with their words, they lie (at least with respect to their wants and desires and opinions) with their actions. Which means that, pace Ekman's studies even of microexpressions, there is no way whatsoever to gain unambiguous access to what other people are thinking or feeling.

Are we then supposed just to give up?

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Think about it though - would you REALLY want to know exactly what it's like inside someone else's head? That just seems too boundary-crossing to me. I think everyone needs corners of themselves to keep to themselves.

Best advice I've ever heard: when people show you who they are, believe them.

I know from the Facebook groups I belong to that many of his followers take Jordan as a kind of spiritual advisor, some would say guru. They spend thread after thread discussing how to live out his sayings.

Which would be fine.

If not for the fact that some of his sayings go directly contrary to the tradition in which he purports to be speaking.

I know, I fell for it, too. In Jordan’s powerful words:
Don’t underestimate the power of your speech! Now, Western culture is phallogocentric. Let’s say it... It is predicated on the idea of the Logos. The Logos is the sacred element of Western culture. What do…

One has just left this post on my own Facebook page about yesterday’s blogpost:
Another shameless post of mind-reading and armchair psychoanalysis with a bit of shock language thrown in for drama and clickbait. And unless you’re suggesting that a boyhood playground tussle is similar to a crucifixion your example of Mary is histrionic to the point of absurdity. If one were to play this same game directed at you they would say this is an example of an Oedipal Mother defending her sick need for her son’s dependence. That would be wrong to do of course—just as wrong as your misguided and unfounded attack that you have cloaked in fake compassion.
This is not a friend whom I know in person; she friended me almost exactly a year ago because she liked what I had said in Milo’s defense. She is much less happy about my re…

To be liable to being considered a heretic, my Facebook friends insist, you need first to declare yourself a believer, and it is not clear whether Peterson thinks of himself in those terms or not. One interviewer calls him “a devout Christian,” to which implied question he is quoted as answering, “Yes.” But when another interviewer asked, “You call yourself a Christian?,” he responded, “I don’t; other people do.”

Certainly, it is possible that he does not know the answer himself; he would most likely reply, “It depends on what you mean by believe.” But to judge from the responses my blogposts about him have been getting, many of my friends have been drawn to his lectures on the psychological significance of the Biblical stories as much by the thought that he is making Christianity if not great, at least interesting again, as …

The convener of one of the Jordan Peterson Facebook groups that I participate in has been pushing me for some time now to be more compassionate towards our professorial “father.” Or, as my friend puts it: “to take off your fencing gear and model the Nourishing Feminine.”

Okay, then, but I have to warn you. It is going to hurt.

What do I see when I look at Jordan Peterson with a mother’s eyes?

I should preface my reflections with the caveat that I speak here not just as the mother of a son, but also as an historian. Reading the textual accounts left by people about their thoughts and emotions is what I do in my scholarship. Just as Jordan has spent the past thirty years as a clinical psychologist, I have spent them as a reader of texts,* my goal as an author being to help the texts speak to audiences for whom they no longer mean anything. I have practiced listening to my texts just as Jordan has practiced listening to his patients, and I hope that I have been able to hear.

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The Merry Medievalist

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“You grasp my soul, and topple my enemies with it. And what is our soul? A splendid weapon it may be, long, sharp, oiled, and coruscating with the light of wisdom as it is brandished. But what is this soul of ours worth, what is it capable of, unless God holds it and fights with it? Any sword, however beautifully made, lies idle if there is no warrior to take it up.... So God does whatever he wishes with our soul. Since it is in his hand, it is his to use as he will." -- Augustine of Hippo, Exposition of Psalm 34 (35),trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B.

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“The best way to pray is: stop. Let prayer pray within you whether you know it or not. This means a deep awareness of your true inner identity.... By grace we are Christ. Our relationship with God is that of Christ to the Father in the Holy Spirit." -- Father Louis, alias Thomas Merton